Murder on Mount Olympus
Closing (Theater and Galleries)
The Short List (Theater)
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When: Fridays, Saturdays. Continues through Nov. 19 2016

Byron Hatfield

When we first encounter some leather-bound tome containing the collected works of Plautus, we might treat it with a quiet reverence—only to open it and find a page full of fart jokes. A live performance, hiccuping and heckling audience and all, is all the more true to the spirit and letter of the text. (Farts, in the round!) So should one want to put on an ancient play authentically, there might be no better place than the Public House Theatre, where for good measure it'll also be accompanied by the continuous hum of rowdy chortles from the long-running drinking show, Bye Bye Liver, playing next door. In Byron Hatfield’s whodunnit, a group of deities find themselves trapped in a room somewhere in Mount Olympus, Illinois. Warily, they accept the butler’s refreshments of chocolates and lukewarm whiskey. They wise up when the specter of death himself suddenly keels over. No one is safe—not the affable pup-headed Aztec god Xolotl or even Zeus himself. Sure, the play’s a little messy. But it captures the weird, chaotic spirit of classical comedy. —Isabel Ochoa Gold